The music began, the audience fell silent, and it was show time. I was about to give one of the most important performances of my life. For a Bharatanatyam dancer, an Arangetram is a graduation ceremony that marks the transition from novice to professional. From the age of seven, I have been taking classes in […]
Most nine-year-olds in Round Lake, Illinois spend their summers outdoors jumping rope or swimming in the lake. I spent my fourth grade summer in my kitchen, teaching my then 68-year-old grandmother the alphabet. My grandma, Mama Pava, grew up in a small Mexican village. She came from a very poor family. Her mother died when […]
Everyone loathes this hour, this incomprehensible time of writhing sheets and wailing babies. No one knows its name–two? Three? It evades all limit and reason: you can only know with groggy certainty that it’s all at once too late and too early, too dark and too light, an enigmatic marauder of all that is safe […]
What is The Nazi Party? Everyone knows or remembers the Nazis and if they don’t then they are either too young to know or ignorant to the great tragedy of World War II. Most people know that the Nazis wanted to take over the world, and make a master race of people. I can bet […]
Junior Year, almost to the end, close to being a senior, yet far from graduating. The question that never fails to be asked continues to come across with almost every adult I have a conversation with… “Where do you think you will go to college”? It is almost like even the slightest stutter or pause […]
As I sat in a high chair across from my parents, I discovered what was to be my life’s calling. My gaze was locked across the dining room of the restaurant on a baby girl not much younger than I was at the time. I gave her one of my first waves, still backwards with […]
Recall the phrase the “Lost Generation”, which defined the disillusioned people of the post World War 1 epoch. If they were lost, then what are we? What of our generation? How are we to be defined? We cannot be accurately categorized as lost. Nor may we be considered profoundly or even minutely found. To be […]
My life, hasn’t been what you would say, the typical American lifestyle. Since the moment I entered this country, till now, my parents have been striving to help me be the most successful in my life. I could still remember the days I used to live in Queens, in which I would have fifteen minute […]
“Why are you so stupid?” “What do you mean stupid?” “You’re just a stupid boy.” “I’m a MAN.” More difficult than the classes, more difficult than the pressure of college and responsibilities is the constant nagging of my female peers. In our school, they are the dominant sex and feminism can be felt from miles […]
I walk to the center of the stage, the microphone stand a mere three inches from my mouth, taking the plastic between my fingers as the piano starts playing. I take a deep breath, tapping my foot to the beat, smiling to myself as I sing the first verse. I lose myself, forgetting for the […]